About the Company
Otto Office is one of the largest business-to-business distance retailers for office supplies in Germany, specializing in mail-order sales, communications equipment, and office furniture to businesses and consumers. Otto Office is owned by Printus, a Germany headquartered mail-order company that provides office supplies, promotional products, and consumer electronics.
The Challenge
Otto Office’s main technical goal is to be fast and reliable to ensure an efficient customer order and delivery process. Users expect a quick process chain and 24h delivery to support their work and life demands. Achieving this requires stable, scalable, and speedy technology. Their database cluster was the central point of Otto Office’s online sales system. It was essential Otto Office had a fast and reliable system architecture in place, so they turned to Percona consultants to help them identify the right solution from multiple options.
The Solution
Otto Office had been using MySQL databases since 1999 and had been reasonably satisfied with their reliability and performance.
More recently, they added cluster functionality via Percona XtraDB Cluster to provide fast data synchronization over different datacentres. They then turned to Percona to improve database latency and architecture.
Percona delivers support for Otto Office’s main database cluster, which supports their online shops. The shops run across two datacentres, and the cluster is stretched over two geographical regions.
Given the criticality of the system, especially during peak hours, Otto office partnered with Percona to:
- Review their database environment in detail to ensure correct configuration and suggest possible improvements related to stability and performance.
- Review their entire database architecture and provide clear recommendations on making the cluster more stable and highly available, including the tolerance of datacentre failure.
Following this consulting engagement, Otto Office chose Percona to provide database support in case of emergency.
Working With Percona
Otto Office is pleased to contract Percona for support services as it ensures peace of mind in case of unforeseen issues.
Sven Jacobsen, Otto Office Director IT & eCommerce, commented, “he support contract is insurance in case of emergency. We will be happy if we don’t use it, but it is good to have a knowledgeable partner in our contact list.
As well as providing Support and Consulting services to Otto Office, Percona also provides support services for MySQL to their market-leading parent company Printus
